A Void Panel Discussion

A VOID Panel Discussion

On Thursday, October 11, 2018, 601Artspace hosted a panel discussion in conjunction with A VOID, an exhibition curated by Paul Ramirez Jonas. Artist Aida Sehovic invited Dr. Kerry Whigham from the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation to join her, and artist Shaun Leonardo invited Jonathan Monsalve, the Project Director of Brooklyn Justice Initiatives. The panel began with a short film about each artists work, and was moderated by Ramirez Jonas.

ŠTO TE NEMA - BOSTON trailer from Aida Šehović on Vimeo.

I Can't Breathe (McColl Center edit) from Shaun Leonardo on Vimeo.

Participant Bios:

Aida Sehovic
Šehović is an artist and founder of the ŠTO TE NEMA nomadic monument. The project began as a one-time performance with a presentation of the first 923 collected porcelain cups (fildžani) in 2006. Since then, ŠTO TE NEMA has evolved into a participatory community art project organized in close collaboration with Bosnian diaspora communities in a different city each year. For the past 13 years, ŠTO TE NEMA has traveled throughout Europe and the United States, and currently consists of more than 7,500 donated cups (fildžani). This year Šehović worked with Bosnian diaspora communities in Switzerland to bring ŠTO TE NEMA to Helvetia Platz in Zürich on July 11, 2018.

Dr. Kerry Whigham, Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation
Kerry Whigham received a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University. Kerry's research focuses on the way post-atrocity societies remember and engage with the past, along with how that violent past impacts the present and future. In particular, his research engages the creation and curation of public memory sites, as well as grassroots, civil society activism, both as a means for shaping public memory and transforming post-conflict societies.

Shaun Leonardo
Leonardo’s multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice is participatory in nature and invested in a process of embodiment, promoting the political potential of attention and discomfort as a means to disrupt meaning and shift perspective

Jonathan Monsalve, Project Director, Brooklyn Justice Initiatives
Operating out of the Brooklyn Criminal Court, Brooklyn Justice Initiatives provides meaningful pretrial, supervised release and post-conviction sentencing options—seeking to use a misdemeanor arrest as a window of opportunity to change the direction of an individual’s life, while avoiding unnecessary incarceration. Mr. Monsalve received his BA and MS in criminal justice from New Jersey City University.